


Prompt: Day One.

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [129]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Codependency, Gen, Human Experimentation, Pre-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 08:27:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11619765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: “We have high hopes for you,” the doctor says. “Twins! And your test results, very interesting.” He turns back to them, clipboard in hand. “Now. Are you ready?”





	Prompt: Day One.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kurisuchie2kimi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurisuchie2kimi/gifts).



> Written for [kurisuchie2kimi](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kurisuchie2kimi/), for a prompt on my tumblr, readable [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/163453110435/hi-prompt-if-theyre-still-open-something).
> 
> Written with the aid of [Plastic Heart by Nostalghia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LaiBsm4DVI). Honestly, this song is GREAT for writing angst to.

 

 **Day 1.**  
The castle is vast. They and all the other volunteers are housed on one floor, buried deep within the stone.

“They want to keep us safe,” says one volunteer. “In case people try to kill us when they succeed.”

“They want to keep us contained,” says another. “In case we become dangerous.”

“They want to keep us  _in,”_  says Wanda. “In case we get the idea to escape.”

Pietro will always trust his sister before anyone else.

 

* * *

**Day 2.**  
The scientists are running tests - blood samples, skin samples, saliva. Resting heart rate and active heart rate, average food intake, hours of sleep.

“We need a baseline,” says Doctor List. “So we can know when you change.”

They have written tests as well - maths and comprehension, mainly, but: “Everything is a test,” whispers Wanda to Pietro.

Pietro does not doubt her.

 

* * *

 

 **Day 3.**  
The first of the others are taken to be tested on. Two of five return to their cells, quivering and shaking, curled in on themselves in some invisible pain. The other three are vanished. Gone.

Strucker comes along to inspect them, the first time since he brought them all to these depths. He talks to List, points at cells, decides who will go next.

Wanda and Pietro curl together, half fearing and half hoping.

 

* * *

 

 **Day 4.**  
Yesterday’s two die. None of the next five return.

“We’re next,” Wanda says.

 

* * *

 

 **Day 5.**  
“We have high hopes for you,” the doctor says. “Twins! And your test results, very interesting.” He turns back to them, clipboard in hand. “Now. Are you ready?”

It burns. It burns until they are gasping, their bones breaking and healing at once, until they are contorted into circles on the floors of these new cells, wishing and wishing and wishing for the other’s hand to grasp.

“Stable,” says the doctor in puzzlement. “Again.”

They scream. It burns through them, this power, through their muscles, rooting into their bones, coursing through their veins, until they feel as though they are shattering, as though they are being remade. They scream until they taste blood.

“Still stable,” the doctor says. “Sir, Doctor List. Look at these two.”

There’s a moment of peace, the cold stone against their skin, the air cold in mouth and throat and lungs.

“Hmm, interesting,” says List. “Once more.”

They black out.

 

* * *

 

 **Day 6.**  
Wanda wakes alone-not-alone. There is no one with her but she knows with certainty, a deeper certainty than ever before, that her brother is in the next room. She rolls over, curls towards the wall. Whispers, “Pietro.”

Her fingers tap over the stone, and she is only half surprised as scarlet spreads from her wrists and fingertips through the wall.  _Pietro,_  she thinks.

Faint as a whisper she hears back,  _Wanda._

 _Wanda,_  says her brother’s mind.  _Wanda, I can’t stop running._

 

* * *

 

 **Day 7.**  
They clear the floor in Pietro’s room, put wooden blocks in hers. She hears her brother’s frustrated mind as he learns to tame his new found, new made speed to his will. He watches through her eyes as she makes wooden blocks float and dance and destroy.

At night, Wanda curls underneath her bed, Pietro on the floor. They press a hand to the wall dividing them and as Wanda thinks her brother’s name he does not flinch at the scarlet curling around his fingertips.

 

* * *

 

 **Day 8.**  
They are led, blinking, into the sunlight. The sun is soft, the air cool. When they look down from the battlements they can see the city of their birth. Their hands rest on stone, fingers twitching towards each other, finding the drip-links on each other’s hands, the bandages.

Wanda’s hands trace her brother’s face, find the ends of his hair where it is bleaching oddly in the light. His hand tangles in her hair, his thumb traces under one scarlet-glowing eye.

“We have it,” he whispers.

“Strength,” she says. “Power.”

Behind them a guard’s mind thinks, as clear as day,  _Freaks._

 

* * *

 

 **Day 13.**  
They train apart as much as they do together. They want Pietro to be able to work with others, want to test the extent of Wanda’s ability to sense and affect minds after she’d almost pushed the guard off the wall with nothing but her will.

They’re trained together too, though, because no one understands them as well as they do each other, there’s no one else who will trust Pietro to carry them at five miles per hour, let alone sixty or a hundred, no one who will let Wanda into their heads as willingly as Pietro does.

 _Strucker thinks we’re miracles,_  Wanda tells Pietro in the evening.  _List that we are fascinating curios. Everyone else fears us, fears what we might do._

Pietro’s lips are gentle and unafraid on her knuckles.

 _They should,_  he thinks.  _You can do anything._

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!


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